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Friday, January 21, 2005

Auschwitz Survivors Recall the Horror 60 Years On

Read Auschwitz Survivors Recall the Horror 60 Years On and then tell me that on what grounds a domestic policy dispute over how much money will be taken from workers and given to retirees merits comparing a sitting president to a notorious tyrant. For those of you who want to make a Bush/Hitler comparisons, what you don't get is that there is a difference in category, a difference in scale, and a decent respect for political differences that makes such a comparison insulting, degrading, and indicative of a tone-deaf understanding of human suffering.

Social security reform is a trivial nothing when one is confronted with an understanding of the oceans of suffering that man has visited upon man.

Anyone who compares George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler on the basis of a disagreement over tax policy is obviously incapable of understanding the lessons presented by a history of human suffering. They do not comprehend the scope and scale of human cruelty. They evidence a willful blindness to the possibilities of finding common ground for reasoned political discussion with domestic political opponents. In fact, comparing a sitting president to a notorious tyrant on the grounds of tax policy precludes any possibility of rational, reasonable debate.